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Patients Should Assign the Risk Where It Belongs
It's time, fellow patients, that we put the legal responsibility for what is being done to us where it belongs. In the stack of forms signed when we seek healthcare anywhere in our current healthcare system, we sign all sorts of forms giving consent for treatment and billing, agreeing to the assignment of insurance benefits and payment, and assumption of the financial and physical risks of seeking care.
Every single form patients sign protects someone else in the system - none of the forms are designed in any way to protect our health and well-being and certainly not our financial status. We sit, sometimes in a state of physical and mental duress, and sign away rights with every single signature.
As we listen to this crafting of "insurance reform" and healthcare reform on a national level, we patients need to be smart and extremely protective of our own personal status, as it is clear that no one else is prepared to do so for us.
I am but one patient, and I am on day 11 of my own post in-patient hospitalization denials of medication and follow-up care recommended during my stay. My insurance neither protects my health nor my financial well-being - and I know so well that I am one of millions of people who try to maneuver a system hostile to my best interests. As consumers, we are disadvantaged so drastically that unless we begin putting these other interests on notice, we can expect more abuse and damage, not less.
This Congress and this President do not intend to protect us any time soon from the defective product that is for-profit, health insurance or from the personal legal risk we are asked to exclusively assume when we seek medical care in this nation.
My insurance company started by denying the medication I tried to pick up at the pharmacy on the way home from my in-patient hospital stay and now is actively blocking the follow-up screenings recommended by the hospital physicians. I thought asking to get these tests done on an out-patient basis would be a responsible way to do this and would allow me to keep up an active work schedule while going through the process. Briefly, I am a cancer survivor with an aneurysm in my thoracic aorta (the main blood vessel between my heart and lungs) that needs appropriate evaluation and some anemia that needs some diagnostic investigation. These issues are troubling to me, and I don't feel as well as I would like. But I cannot get care right now.
So, I am putting the insurance company and providers on notice that I hold them all responsible for the delay. If something dire happens, I am not the one at fault as I am being responsible in seeking appropriate care, carrying insurance and expecting these actions to result in something very different from what is happening now.
The legal definition of a defective product is: "A product is in a defective condition, unreasonably dangerous to the user, when it has a propensity or tendency for causing physical harm beyond that which would be contemplated by the ordinary user, having ordinary knowledge of the product's characteristics commonly known to the foreseeable class of persons who would normally use the product."
Part of the legal definition of health insurance is: "Protection against loss by sickness or bodily injury, in which sense it is synonymous with accident and health, accident and sickness, accident, or disability income insurance."
Interesting, eh?
As far as I am concerned, waiting for some half-baked health insurance regulation or reform to kick in sometime in 2013 is insufficient in the face of the direct assault on my personal security - both my physical and financial health.
I would like to see a Medicare for All system to blow up this whole reform mess for those who continue to abuse my rights and do so knowingly and at my peril - not their own. But I suspect we'll see something very different from the wealthy folks who sit in Congress and the President who isn't yet internalizing the risk at which he is leaving his nations' citizens.
So, for now, I will personally notice them. In writing. I purchase health insurance. I try to be responsible seeking care. And when I am denied and delayed as I am now, the risk of those failures to provide service and care will now be placed directly where the risk belongs - on the insurance companies and the providers who are complicit.
And should the worst happen to any one of us - if we should die because we are denied or delayed - we must leave with our loved ones a trail of legally enforcement communications if we are ever to truly challenge and change this awful system. The loss of our own humanity is apparently not enough to compel our leaders yet.
If our lawmakers will not make laws that protect patients, we must take matters into our own hands and create and enforce accountability. It's time. It's past time. Until we have a just healthcare system, we simply cannot just grovel for care and beg for payment plans and the like when our insurance leaves us bare for financial trauma. This has been a one-sided and abusive business arrangement so far, and we need to protect ourselves.
21 Comments so far
Show AllDamn right.
Obama's NO INSURER LEFT BEHIND, NO PATIENT LEFT A DIME program being disguised as "health care reform" will no doubt result in even more waiver forms full of weasel clauses for patients to sign.
Contact your 2 senators today and tell them not to vote for Baucus' bill. If the bill passes anyway, buy stock in drug and insurance companies...that way at least you will get some benefit from Obama's "health care reform".
From the article: "The loss of our own humanity is apparently not enough to compel our leaders yet."
The loss of our humanity is not enough to convince the average Joe and Jane in this country. My brother is a 'Christian', he considers Jesus his personal saviour. Over the weekened, I saw him for the first time in two years. He said that he didn't believe that health care was a human right.
When he said that, I didn't even ask him why he held that belief. I don't know how to deal with usually kind and intelligent people who are so lacking in compassion except to walk away from them. I don't have the energy to even try with the all-too-many-just-average-Joes who think like my brother.
Guess that says as much about my humanity as it does about theirs, huh?
jld_overseas, next time your brother says that he doesn't believe that health care is a human right, try this:
You would have said the same thing to Lazarus! And that's the difference between you and your personal Savior.
ยท Yr Obd't Servant
there are 3 things you might try next time:
"if jesus christ came and begged, he is a pauper, you can even say it was all his own fault for abusing his life...and is getting what was coming to him...he's a "loser", but nonetheless comes for help...to be cared for because he is sick ....would you have denied him health care because he is "just a loser?"
for HE said: "whatsoever you do unto these, the LEAST of MY brethren...you do unto me".
Mahatma Gandhi once said: "EVERYONE in the world knows that Jesus preached Love and Kindness....except Christians"...
and also said when asked "what do you LIKE and ADMIRE about America, Mister Gandhi? .."
"I do not like your christians...they are so Unchristlike".
Donna Smith is right; it's long past time for single payer health care. Obama and the Corporate Dems can pass all the bills they want, if they don't pass single payer, the protest will go on. Hey! Obama, don't yah get it, we ain't going away this time!
They seem to believe (Obama & Dems) that if they pass a bill, any bill, that has a label on it that says "Health Care Reform Act," that we will all thank them and go back to sleep. Bill Clinton got away with that sham, but no one's going back to sleep this time. The Dems may not understand this today, but they will understand it come next years congressional election.
This health care debate is all theater. The dems are no better than the repugs.
It's very clear...both parties are working for the insurance companies.
Never has our system so blatantly demonstrated how corrupt this two party system really is...
I am reminded of a story that my Grandfather used to tell about me. When I was five I asked him; 'Grandfather, why is water wet'? He laughed and said he did not know but would 'consider it'. As he tells the story he thought on the question for some time and then decided that he would ask others, they did not know either. So they asked others, who asked others, who asked others and finally a very small elderly woman, one who had seen much and even remembered when her tribe had been free roaming horse people. She laughed and said 'well, if it was not wet, you could not drink it'; which was a 'good answer'.
Then later one of his nephews who was a 'Country Doctor' and practiced among his own poeple gave him 'another answer', a 'scientific answer' that only a 'Doctor' would answer with. The reason water is wet he said, is because of the extra hydrogen atom, i.e. 'H2O', if not for this, it would be a 'gas'; and you could not drink it. The "Doctor had the answer"---but it was no less valid than the old woman's just based upon science nothing more. It 'sounded better' that is all.
So the one question had two answers.
The same with the Health Care dilemma now facing the USA.
The one problem is that the Doctors now, are 'smaller people' than they were then. They allow themselves to be members of the Plutocratic Oligarchy, and they know that they are 'part of the problem'. The Doctors across the USA are simply delivery 'boys and girls' for a necessary product in a defective system. The truth in the matter is this.
If the Doctors of the USA decided tomorrow that they would no longer participate in the system, and gave the insurance companies 30 days notice 'to get out of the way'; or they would no longer 'deliver', the insurance companies would 'fold' and walk away from the table. They could not keep the control they have now without the Doctors of the USA participating WITH them. The Doctors are the source of the treatments and the prescriptions and they are the 'hub' of the system. They give the orders, and they are the ones who 'charge the services, that the insurance companies pay for' ;often reluctantly ----if at all.
Yet recently the Doctors across the country participated with the Plutocratic Oligarchy in convincing many voters in several states to 'restrict malpractice settlements to 250K for pain and suffering' (they put a price tag on pain). The politicians said it was for 'tort reform', and the Doctors often said that the costs of malpractice insurance cost them too much---while in reality those costs were and are "tax deductible costs of doing business"---. It was the Insurance companies that were having to pay out the high malpractice decisions handed down by 'juries in courts of law'----how stupid is that America; give away your own rights to insurance companies----and weak cowardly Doctors?
Few if any of them spoke out against the absurdity of a 'price tag on pain and suffering'---they went along with the 'PO'.
Next time the readers visit their Doctor keep it in mind that they are part of the system that 'eats off you'---a large group of parasites----not much more than a 'tick on a dog's rectum'..........
It will remain so unless the people of the USA take control; instead of leaving it in the 'hands of the Doctor'...........put it into their own hands.
Good Luck America, you really need it.
Sioux Rose
NATIVE SON: I like the parable you shared, and think you raised a most astute & excellent point about many doctors, thankfully not all!
Yesterday, I was totally disgusted with my company's insurance provider after I found out from one of my coworkers who raised the question of alternative practioners and homeopathy. It turns out my insurance company doesn't cover them. It has to do with big government FDA and DEA. We need to abolish those two agencies so that insurance companies can be forced to cover those expenses.
The problem is that homeopathy, and a lot of alternative medicine has no scientific evidence supporting it aside from the usual placebo effect seen with minor ails. Some of it is potentially harmful, especially of it prevents a patient from getting proper treatment. It has nothing to do with "big government". Resources are limited, every odd folk-treatment cant be covered in either any system, public or private. I don't think Canadian Medicare or British NHS would cover it either.
Please read Sinclairs classic "The Jungle" if you think we would be better off without the FDA.
I've read Sinclair's book. The FDA isn't what Sinclair would want it to be. I found some discussion on stevia and FDA's banning of that plant even when proven harmless. This is the same FDA that allowed high frustose corn syrup and aspartame into the market even after scientific tests proved long term health risks. Any drug you see advertised these days and approved by the FDA has more dangerous side effects while the natural alternatives don't. The FDA is a corporate check-in check-out house. I don't mean to say "big government" in a libertarian sense but a lot of it is getting to the point that I'd side with them on abolishing a great deal of it. The DEA is another rogue. If it weren't for them, we'd be making and buying more products from hempseed oil and cutting down on petroleum. I have friends who whose relatives and siblings work in those departments and I've gotten loads of information on how data is fudged for this and that. Those two agencies are so full of corruption to the point that they're better off getting the ax. You are correct that some natural alternatives are harmful and not scientifically proven but not all of them are so.
Donna, good luck trying to sue an insurance company in Civil Court. They can out-money anyone and in US courts its only money that counts. I am a former candidate for Vt Attorney General and this issue is precisely why I was a candidate. What we should do is arrest and prosecute in Criminal Court the insurance company executives for Manslaughter. Find a State Attorney General who is willing to do that. Bet you can't find one.
Medicare for all will not solve the problem. It does not include vision, dental, or long term care. There is only ONE solution - SINGLE PAYER.
Why are we trying to reinvent the wheel. Other countries know how to do it, why are we so lame in the US?
I've asked people about charging health corporation execs with homicide, but I never really get much of an answer. I don't understand why denial of benefits is not considered practicing medicine without a licence. I don't understand why any death that results from that denial is not considered felony murder.
It's not felony murder (or even negligent homicide) because in the US property rights trump human rights. As long as that bean-counter doesn't physically put a gun to the victim's head and pull the trigger, the corporation and officers --the modern equivalent of a feudal principality and nobility-- are free of obligation.
"Why are we so lame...?" Because we prioritize Empire. You will never have guns + butter without financial disaster. That is part of the reason Dems are not pushing much of anything. They know it would bankrupt us and they don't want to cut any spending in general and now they have the excuse that gov't should not cut spending in a recession. Sometimes it's because if gov't cut spending it would throw us into recession.
Now the question is. Are Texas and some other red Southern states going to secede and what impact might have on the body politic of this country and continued Crawford Teaasazation of the USA.
AD
Aw shucks, you'd miss us if we were gone! (lol)
An excellent article as usual. Donna makes more sense than a lot of people and certainly those in Congress. And she can recoginize Bat Guano when she see's it.
AD got me to thinking, if Donna was in Texas she might very well have a go. Because of our Tort reforms which included a number of citizen friendly items, it might do well here.
With or without the now-shriveled public option, all the main Democatic bills are WORSE than no reform. They neither control costs nor significantly expand coverage, but now FORCE people to buy the overpriced, gap-ridden products of the HMOs. Just another cynical corporate bailout tricked out as "reform."
The prhase "public option" has become an MSM buzzword vaguely meaning "something like Medicare." But the pub-op proposals on the table are nothing like Medicare. In fact, they have been cynically neutered to present no threat to the HMOs or to offer any path to single payer.
The corporate elite plays for keeps--they are always at least a dozen strategic steps ahead of the opposition. They feign apoplexy over the public option even though they have covertly worked to reduce it to a harmless nullity.
Heads they win, tails we lose.
Please see the following:
1. "Bait and Switch: How the Public Option Was Sold"
http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/20/bait-and-switch-how-the-%E2%80%9Cpublic-option%E2%80%9D-was-sold/
.2. "Does the Congressional Progressive Caucus Care About Its Progressive Principles?"
http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/28/does-the-congressional-progressive-caucus-care-about-its-public-option-principles/
3. Reply to Critics
http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/08/08/reply-to-critics-of-%E2%80%9Cbait-and-switch-how-the-%E2%80%98public-option%E2%80%99-was-sold%E2%80%9D
Thanks to Obedient Servant and Siouxrose for your participation:
A very special thanks to NativeSon.
I recently heard a radio show where the question was asked "Why be mad at your doctors? They are your neigbors and friends." (NPR)
I'm sorry to report that none of my neighbors are doctors. My neighbors are or were hard working low to middle income americans.
The way above average pay scale for doctors precludes them living anywhere near me.
I'm also sorry to say that none would be my friend in any case. I was a relatively high paid technician in the computer and electronics field. At my highest income I was very far behind the level of a junior physician.
My income now does not exist. Somehow my job opportunities drifted off to foreign lands where technicians were much more inexpensive.
The reason most doctors would not be my friends is because of my experience as a technician. A doctor is just a technician.
In my forty years on the job I found excellent technicians to be extremely rare. Very good ones are not at all common. The rest are parts changers who rely on past experience and "shotgun" repairs. They try a lot of irrelevant things and hopefully they eventually find the problem.
As time went by my body aged and things went awry. As an experienced and careful technician I did my own research on my illness. I often found physicians who mis-diagnosed and ordered inproper tests.
Doctors who had graduated in a given year often had a shelf full of medical texts in their offices that had nothing more current than the few years following their graduation.
Why should they? They had their beemers and their boats and their trophy wives.
If I can go online and find out the latest research, or go to a major public library and use the same tools available to their profession, why is their income such a high multiple of mine?
In my early career I did house calls to repair consumer electronics. I visited many doctor's homes on a professional basis. I am happy to report that most were decent enough. A few were insane or alcoholic or both.
I am sad to report that no one in their profession was willing to blow the whistle on them or get them help.
Tort reform my ass. Sue the sorry sob's out of the profession and save someone pain or death.
That's where the risk belongs. Their crime their risk.